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Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

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Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#141

Post by jonwinstanley »

blitzar wrote: post #129
jonwinstanley wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do that? Sorry if it's obvious - I've looked for this functionality before and didn't spot it

Bottom right says "cursor tab" you can manually manipulate it there (and snooze for X minutes - interesting feature). For binding shortcuts - Command/Ctrl + Shift + P, then look for "Enable|Disable|Whatever Cursor Tab" and set shortcuts there. Old fashioned variable name / function name auto complete is not affected. I considered a small macropad to enable / disable with a status light - but honestly don't do enough…

Thanks!

The thing that bugs me is when Im trying to use tab to indent with spaces, but I get a suggestion instead.

I tried to disable caps lock, then remap tab to caps lock, but no joy

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#142

Post by emseetech »

xnorswap wrote: post #139
welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

AI autocomplete can be infuriating if like me, you like to browse the public methods and properties by dotting the type. The AI autocomplete sometimes kicks in and starts writing broken code using suggestions that don't exist and that prevents quickly exploring the actual methods available. I have largely disabled it now, which is a shame, because there are also times it feels like magic and I can see how it could be…

If I can, I map it to ctrl-; so I can bring it up when I need it.

But I found once it was optional I hardly ever used it.

I use Deepseek or others as a conversation partner or rubber duck, but I'm perfectly happy writing all my code myself.

Maybe this approach needs a trendy name to counter the "vibe coding" hype.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#143

Post by zkry »

imiric wrote: post #117
welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

This is the way. All this IDE churn makes me glad to have settled on Emacs a decade ago. I have adopted LLMs into my workflow via the excellent gptel, which stays out of my way but is there when I need it. I couldn't imagine switching to another editor because of some fancy LLM integration I have no control over. I have tried Cursor and VS Codium with extensions, and wasn't impressed. I'd rather use an "inferior" edi…

Ironically LLMs have made Emacs even more relevant. The model LLMs use (text) happens to match up with how Emacs represents everything (text in buffers). This opens up Emacs to becoming the agentic editor par excellence. Just imagine, some macro magic acound a defcommand and voila, the agent can do exactly what a user can. If only such a project could have the funding like Cursor does...

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#144

Post by deafpolygon »

I use neovim now, after getting tired of the feature creep and the constant chasing of shiny new features.

AI is not useful when it does the thinking for you. It's just advanced snippets at that point. I only use LLMs to explain things or to clarify a topic that doesn't make sense right away to me. That's when it shows it's real strength.

sing AI for autocomplete? I turn it off.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#145

Post by nsteel »

welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

I can't even get simple code generation to work for VHDL. It just gives me garbage that does not compile. I have to assume this is not the case for the majority of people using more popular languages? Is this because the training data for VHDL is far more limited? Are these "AIs" not able to consume the VHDL language spec and give me actual legal syntax at least?! Or is this because I'm being cheap and lazy by only trying free chatGPT and I should be using something else?

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#146

Post by cdrx »

_1tem wrote: post #68
Euphorbium wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it uses claude code by default, it is literally the same thing, with different (better) interface.

Really interesting. Source?

Junie in Ask mode:

> Which LLM are you?

> I am Claude, an AI assistant created by Anthropic. In this interface, I'm operating as "Junie," a helpful assistant designed to explore codebases and answer questions about projects. I'm built on Anthropic's large language model technology, specifically the Claude model family.

Jetbrains wider AI tools let you choose the model that gets used but as far as I can tell Junie doesn't. That said, it works great.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#147

Post by throwanem »

zkry wrote: post #143
imiric wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the way. All this IDE churn makes me glad to have settled on Emacs a decade ago. I have adopted LLMs into my workflow via the excellent gptel, which stays out of my way but is there when I need it. I couldn't imagine switching to another editor because of some fancy LLM integration I have no control over. I have tried Cursor and VS Codium with extensions, and wasn't impressed. I'd rather use an "inferior" edi…

Ironically LLMs have made Emacs even more relevant. The model LLMs use (text) happens to match up with how Emacs represents everything (text in buffers). This opens up Emacs to becoming the agentic editor par excellence. Just imagine, some macro magic acound a defcommand and voila, the agent can do exactly what a user can. If only such a project could have the funding like Cursor does...

Nothing could be worse for the modern Emacs ecosystem than for the tech industry finance vampires ("VCs," "LPs") to decide there's blood enough there to suck.

Fortunately, alien space magic seems immune, so far at least. I assume they do not like the taste, and no wonder.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#148

Post by elAhmo »

welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

Cursor/Windsurf and similar IDEs and plugins are more than autocomplete on steroids.

Sure, you might not like it and think you as a human should write all code, but frequent experience in the industry in the past months is that productivity in the teams using tools like this has greatly increased.

It is not unreasonable to think that someone deciding not to use tools like this will not be competitive in the market in the near future.

Re: Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf?

#150

Post by aldanor »

welder wrote: post #75

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

We have an internal ban policy on copilot for IP reasons and while I was... missing it initially, now just using neovim without any AI feels fine. Maybe I'll add an avante.nvim for a built-in chat box though.
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